I sometimes feel like I am living in a cave when I keep reading all the magazines and webzines about social networking sites. It is not that I am not online. I have a web presence, developed a website in Ruby on Rails (the current hot thingy) and show in enough Google search pages. But, I seemed to have completely skipped the whole connected on the web generation.
Other than email, the amount of internet connectedness that I do is pretty low. A little bit of rec.music.indian.music (RMIM) in 1996, a little bit of Yahoo chat in 1999, and currently, a little bit of LinkedIn.
I know all the sites that are talked about all the time like here: Slashdot | Friendster\’s Rise and Fall. Not only have I not been active, but I can also count on my fingers the number of times I have been to MySpace and YouTube.
The only time I went to MySpace was when it was linked off this interesting story about a guy who lost his Sidekick and tracked the people who found it but did not return to him. He found they were taking pictures on the phone that were synced to the online site and he tracked down their MySpace profile. I think I did browse around to YouTube for some fun stuff (Darth Vader videos), but it gets pretty boring after about minutes of video.
I do believe in Networking. I once even religiously read the “Dig Your Well Before You Are Thirsty” book and quote from it often. (The frequent one is that the USC Alumni Network is mentioned as the best example of alumni network). I use LinkedIn for my professional and alumni networking and see some useful professional referral traffic flowing around.
Who are all these people who find time to spend time chatting, sending messages, commenting on myspaces and having a “Second Life” ala Linden Labs? Shouldn\’t professionals be working, students be studying and socialites be dancing at the clubs? Are we too busy to live and party live nowadays?
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